NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22406, 30 April 1936, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS

THE WORLD'S FEVER What ails the world? asks "Scrutator," writing in tho Sunday Times. There never was a time when the intellectual conviction was so widespread in Europe that another war will he tho downfall of its civilisation; never a tjme when the specific subjects of quarrel were so few, so completely irrelevant to the problems of national happiness and prosperity, so amenable to treatment by gentlo means, so defiant of treatment by force. Yet never was fear so universal,, and tho very irrationality of the manifestations of national spirit seems to increase its inflammation. What is tho explanation? What is the cause of the world's fever? One answer may he that one generation seems to have the courage of its wrong ideas, but not the courage of its ideas that are right- Another answer is that man, thanks to science, has developed his physical and material power out of all proportion to his moral and intellectual nature and beyond his ability to control it. Yet a third answer—not by any means the whole truth, but an aspect of it-is that the world has contracted so much that everyone s business is everyone else's. We are in danger of forgetting that to mind our own business, though not the whole duty of political man, is at any rate a part of it. Britain cannot possibly serve tho world by injuring itself. LORD BEATTY'S QUALITIES The very qualities which identified Lord Beatty as a great man of action have misled some into under-rating the powers of his intelligence, says the Times in casting up tho war admiral s qualities! He was in fact very far from being all temperament, all aggression and audacity. But he was no student, and his genius for war was more instinctive than instructed. Nelson was his model, but he was not notable for the foresight and careful attention to detail in which as well as in courage and strategical genius so much of Nelson's greatness lay. Tho very qualities which made him great in battle bred in him an impatience with the character, very different from his own, of Jeilicoe, his Commander-in-Chief. There was a bar to full and cordial co-operation between the two men. Nevertheless, when he himself succeeded to the command-in-chief, lie came to adopt many of the principles and measures against which he had chafed in a subordinate position. The nation, however, will not remember Beatty as the administrator, the First Sea Lord who held office for longer than any of his predecessors. They frill think of him as the commander who in a war which forbade the more spectacular demonstrations of sea power, proved that the British naval tradition had lost nothing of its life and fire. STILL THE OLD GERMANY I lived in Germany from 1919 until the middle of 1933, continuously, and it has always been my impression that the big industrialists and Junkers (militarists) never lost control, writes a correspondent of the Daily Telegraph. They remained in the background while the so-called Republic was able to negotiate better terms with the Allies. But the real masters were these industrialists and militarists. The Reichswehr (army) was supreme. When the Allies withdrew from the Rhineland in 1930 the time had come for the above-named rulers to come out more openly. It is more than likely that they supported Hitler, who would be a useful man, in order to get the German nation welded into one solid national block, after the odd 20 parties of tho so-called Republic had been swept away. The Germans are to-day completely enslaved to the same system to which they were enslaved previous to 1914. The only difference is that the Kaiser's place has been taken by Hitler. Under present circumstances a man from the common people is necessary to play that role. But, just as the Kaiser in pre-war days was merely the figurehead of a system, so is Hitler to-day just a symbol that serves its purpose. The Prussian General Staff is still the driving and directing force in Germany, just as it was before 1914. He who knows Germany well can never believe that the real masters of Germany) the Junkers and industrialists, would have tolerated a former painter as the figurehead of the State unless this arrangement served their purposes. Their purpose is war, and in order to prepare this coming war they needed a man who could galvanise tho masses and saturate them with patriotic propaganda so as to make Germany one great fighting machine with a warlike mentality and with the will to win. THE KING AS A SPEAKER As a speaker King Edward follows the modern style in cutting out all rhetorical ornament, writes a correspondent in the London Observer. He avoids adjectives and adverbs unless they are essential to the meaning. In a word, he is direct and brief, not classical and allusive. On all except purely formal occasions, when tho choice of words is necessarily limited, his method is to study the subject first by getting up the local history, to consult with tho experts on various details and matters of fact with which he is naturally unfamiliar, and then to put his own thoughts into words—short, crisp words chosen for their meaning rather than their reverberation. These aro then moulded into brief sentences, each simply constructed and standing by itself. Tho whole produces an effect utterly unlike tho jargon popularly known as "official" or "Civil Service English." The King, in fact, speaks tho King's English, not tho crinolined variety patronised by the Circumlocution Office. Everydho remembers tho famous occasion when he claimed that he found his own manhood in the war. Less well known, perhaps, was the remark that a great deal had been done toward housing tho well-to-do since the war, but comparatively little for the poor. Other memorable occasions during the past 15 years at home and abroad have shown him as a man of strong personality and decided views, who was not to be confined by his exalted rank to saying merely what Court officials thought was proper to be said. There is a time for platitude. But there is also a time for precision and purpose. His speeches may not bo oratory as Gladstone and Pitt and Peel understood oratory. But tastes and times have changed. Similes have gone out, simplicity has come in, and with it a straightforwardness that, at least to our ears, sounds more sincere. Tho King is not lacking in tact, and he has never cast himself for the role of candid friend. But what he sajs he means.